A Reluctant Alliance
by Caramon
Summary: A mad man forces the Straw hat pirates and the marines to work together against a common enemy. May it also create a new and not necessarily welcome relationship? ZoroTashigi


**Chapter 1: A Long Day**

**---**

Zoro walked down the street away from the Going Merry. He could hear Luffy and Chopper both as they ran off down the street in a different direction where a flock of sea gulls were lounging on the ground. Nami-san was going shopping again, of course, and Niko-Robin had disappeared as she did from time to time.

As for Zoro, he was looking around for a pub. He'd had to put aside his usual drinking habits as of late because they had marines on their tails and hadn't yet had the time to stop at a port for a decent amount of time. 

Suddenly, Zoro heard a crash and turned just as a large man with a beard and bandana around his head came crashing out of a window. The building he'd been in had a big sign over it with a mug of beer printed on it.

Smiling, Zoro thought to himself, 'just my kind of place', and began walking towards it intending to get completely and totally smashed. Just then, his Captain ran by up the street. Did I say ran? More like _flew_ up the street with a large man who had two cigars's stuck in his mouth hot on his tail. Smoker and his fellow marines had found them once again, it seemed.

Sighing, Zoro resigned to give up getting drunk once again to go and save his captain. Turning after them, he was stopped from chasing after Smoker by a sword that was suddenly at his throat.

Holding the sword was a certain lieutenant named Tashigi. She was part of Smoker's regiment and had always had a thing for getting in Zoro's way.

"Draw your sword, Roronoa Zoro!" she exclaimed, "you're not going to just get away this time!"

Again, Zoro sighed, this time in frustration. Why did it always have to be this one that picked a fight with him? The one marine that he couldn't bring himself to fight had to be the one who held a grudge against him. "Look, I don't have time to play with you right now. Can't you just let me by this once?" he said, attempting to move around the blade at his neck.

But Tashigi followed him with her blade. While Zoro knew her to be a complete klutz, even she couldn't miss slitting his throat if she wanted to right now. "Uh, uh, uh", she said waving the pointer finger of her other hand not holding the sword in a chiding guesture, "As I already said, I'm not letting you go again. Now draw you're sword!"

Zoro stepped back a pace and drew his sword half-heartedly. This was bad. While he wasn't worried in the least about losing to this persistent idiot, her resemblance to a long lost friend prevented him from being able to just fight her as a normal opponent. On the other hand, people had formed a circle around them when they heard her say his name. A fight between a marine lieutenant and the infamous Roronoa Zoro? This was something they couldn't miss!

Unfortunately, this also prevented Zoro from being able to just run away, as the crowd was too dense to make a hasty escape. This left one option: he had to disarm her. He couldn't hurt her, but maybe he could knock her sword out of her hand…

She let out a cry of anger as she swung her sword up and over her head trying to slash Zoro across the face. He held his sword up and caught the blow with it's edge, then tried to slide his sword down and over to knock hers from her grasp. But she was quick, and she whipped it around in a wide arc, aiming for his side. He parried this as well.

Over and over, he dodged, blocked, and parried, searching for an opening to finally disarm her and end this fight. He refused to hurt her, no matter what.

Tashigi leaped back for a moment and cursed at Zoro. "Dammit! Why don't you try your best? You've slain hundreds of people! I'm tired of being taken lightly because I'm a girl! FIGHT ME GODDAMMIT!"

And with that, she leaped at him again, and Zoro barely had enough time to pull his sword up in front of hers before she hit. Metal clanged on metal. Tashigi recovered quick and whipped her sword down and around in a fast movement. This time, Zoro couldn't completely block it and she cut a long gouge in his side.

The pain was quick and intense. However, Zoro had long ago trained himself to ignore such things, and this time he bashed her hand with the hilt of his sword as she was trying to pull back. She dropped her sword and suddenly found herself looking at the point of Zoro's sword aimed at her face. She looked into her eyes and saw anger, pain and… was that a twinkle of softness?

No. It couldn't be. Not from this man who had mercilessly killed each and every opponent he'd faced. Save one.

"You've disarmed me."

Zoro stayed silent, holding his sword level.

"Finish it."

With that, she knelt down onto her knees in front of him, staring up into his face with defiance and cold determination.

Again, Zoro said nothing, but he seemed to twitch, nonetheless. But he made no move to 'finish it'. Just stood there, looking down at her.

"Go on! You've won! Now kill me!" she cried.

He hesitated, then slowly lowered his sword and held it at his side. Then, he turned and began to walk away through the crowd.

"KILL ME YOU BASTARD!" she screamed at his back. She launched herself at him, intending to end this once and for all. But she never got the chance. For suddenly, something hit her on the back of her head, and she knew no more.

Zoro woke up. His head was pounding and he felt sick. He could feel a cold, stone floor beneath him. Something wet was laid across his forehead and his head was resting on a pillow or something.

Opening his eyes, he saw that he was lying in a room made entirely of stone bricks, and the only light came from a torch. Leaning up against a wall to his right was Tashigi, watching him with no expression on her face.

The sight of her brought back the memories of that day: The fight, how he'd disarmed her, how she had screamed and then launched herself at him. After that, things got fuzzy…

He reached up to his forehead and felt a water soaked cloth there. He took it off and stood up, watching Tashigi warily.

"Where am I? And where's Luffy? And my swords?" That last was asked as he realized that all three of his swords were missing.

Tashigi shrugged. "Don't look at me. We're both locked in here. As for you're captain, I saw him being escorted by some guys wearing strange armor down the hall with Smoker. They were carrying Smoker because he was unconscious. From the looks of him, they had to beat him up quite a bit before they could take him. Both had some weird jacket on them." As she talked, he could hear cold fury in her voice. He could understand why. After all, she'd seen her superior being carried away after being beaten into unconsciousness.

"Was Luffy alright? They didn't hurt him did they?" Zoro asked. He wasn't all that worried. Luffy could take care of himself usually. Though, the thing about the jackets was very interesting…

Tashigi rolled her eyes. "Straw hat's fine. He was walking and trying to talk to the guards, for all the world as if they were bringing him to a party or something."

Zoro nodded. Then, he walked over to a water basin and splashed some of it over his head. He still felt sick, but he put that away for now. He needed to find a way out of here. What kind of a man was he if he was gonna let a little knock on the head and some nausea cause him to just sit quietly while their unknown enemies did what they like? Actually, he was kind of embarrassed. Roronoa Zoro… one of the most feared sword fighters ever. Taken out of action by a simple hit to the head. Disgraceful… when he got out of this cell, he'd make sure whoever'd done this to him paid for it. In the meantime, he might as well try to find a way out.

He tried the door. He didn't really expect it to be open, but he tried anyway. It was locked, of course, and there was nothing in the room that would help him get out of here.

Sighing, he sat down and leaned back against the wall with his arms folded behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. If you can't do anything, then you might as well rest so that when your chance came, you'd be ready.

He jumped a little as Tashigi's voice suddenly brought him back to reality. "Why didn't you kill me back in town when you had the chance?"

He looked at her. She was looking at him with anger written all over her face. As if she'd _wanted_ to die and he had prevented that!

He turned away and said, "What does it matter? You want to die so bad, then you can do it yourself."

"It's because I'm a girl, isn't it? You couldn't kill me because you can't bear to kill a female. Is that it?" she said, voice rising, tight with anger.

He said nothing for a few moments, trying to decide how best to get her to shut up. Finally, he just said, "I don't want to kill you because… well… you look like a friend I had a long, long time ago." With that, he rolled over, hoping that she'd be satisfied and would leave him alone now.

In truth, he just didn't want to talk to her. Not only did she _look_ like her, but she also _sounded_ like her. The resemblance between Tashigi and… his friend… was almost scary. He didn't want anything to do with her.

But his plan was thwarted as she said curiously, "Was she important to you or something? And where is she now?"

Getting a little frustrated (couldn't this girl take a hint?), he said, "Yes, she was important to me. And she's dead now. She died a long time ago."

Tashigi paused. "Oh… I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't mean to intrude. I was just curious."

Zoro merely grunted in reply.

He shut his eyes, thinking that the subject was closed, until Tashigi then asked, "So why was she so important to you? Did you fall in love with her or something?"

Angry now, Zoro yelled, "We swore and oath to each other, alright? Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Well we have all the time in the world right now, don't we," Tashigi shouted back. "I just thought the we might as well try and get to know each other a little better. It would pass the time."

"Why do you want to know me? You're trying to kill me, remember? Or trying to get me to kill you. Or just getting in my way."

"I don't care. Right now, we might as well be on the same side. Were _both_ in this together, you know. We have a common enemy. Let's at least put on a truce 'til _after_ we get out of here. K?"

Zoro shook his head in resignation. "You don't give up easy, do you?"

She shrugged. "Nope."

He shook his head, then, when he looked up, grudgingly began to speak. "We swore that one day, one of us will become the best swordsman in the world. One way, or the other."

And so, he told the tale of how he metKuina and how she had been the best in her father's class, but that he told her that girls could never be the best swordsmen. He told of how they had at first fought each other, and then became friends as the both realized that the other wanted the same unattainable goal and how they both ended up making the promise to be the best. Then he told of how Kuina had died, leaving Zoro alone to keep his end of the promise.

When he finished, Tashigi sat staring at the floor, lost in thought. 'Finally,' Zoro thought, 'she's shut up'. But then he found that he had enjoyed telling her his story. She just seemed to understand and, other than that, she seemed to _sympathize_ with him.

Finally, Tashigi said slowly, "You know, when I was little, I wanted to be the best marine there ever was. I wanted to be everyone's hero; the person that people all over the world would look up to. But no one ever took me seriously because…" she paused, looking at the floor, eyes distant.

"Because you're a girl." Zoro said.

She nodded, not looking up. "I remember when they were training me, they put me up against a boy sometimes and we were supposed to spar each other. But the boys always said that they were afraid they'd hurt me with my little, frail, girl body. The teacher's just always laughed…"

Zoro stayed silent. He could have said something that would have been blunt and generally not all that caring, which is what he usually would have done under these circumstances, but he didn't. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in a cell trying to sleep while some sobbing girl cried about how no one thought she was worth anything. With this in mind, he said, "Well, you seem to have become a marine anyway. You didn't let that stop you. You turned out pretty well, actually, for a marine."

At this, she looked up. "You really think so?" she asked, gratitude shining in her eyes.

Personally, Zoro really couldn't imagine anyone as klutzy as she was and had seen a group of monkeys that had become marines and were better than her, but he wasn't gonna say that. So, he said, "Yah! Of course! When you get something into your head, you never give up. I don't know how many times you've got in my way, got defeated, chased me, and then did it all over again."

Tashigi's eyes were practically sparkling, and Zoro thought 'jeez, she must really get put-down a lot if she's already feeling better with just a few words of praise'. But, the thought was suddenly cut off, as Tashigi suddenly launched herself at Zoro.

'Crap! Why is she attacking me?' He thought and put up his hands to try and defend himself as she tackled him and began to beat the crap out of him. Or, that's what he thought she was going to do. Instead, he found himself in the middle of a large, grateful hug from her.

"Oh Zoro-kun, no ones ever said stuff like that to me before! Everyone's always just telling me how clumsy and stupid I am. No one has ever told me that I'm anything but a failure." She said as she continued hugging him, tears in her eyes.

'What the hell have I done?' he thought to himself as he reluctantly returned the embrace, patting her awkwardly on the back. "Um, that's ok?" Despite feeling disconcerted by this sudden display of affection, he couldn't help notice just how good it felt to be hugged and to hug back… how warm her body was against hi-

No. He crushed those thoughts. Completely and totally. This was no place to start becoming a love struck idiot. A) He had too much on his mind to 'try new things', B) He had something he had to complete before he could even consider anything but his current mission, and C) The last thing he needed was to fall head over heels for some chick that just got her head swelled by some praise.

But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't help but enjoy the hug. Finally, Tashigi pulled away and stepped back, wiping her eyes and composing herself. "Sorry about that. It just felt good to hear something other than my faults."

Zoro was still convincing himself that he had _not_ just felt that way about her, when the door suddenly blew open.

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To be continued...

Please read and review! Reviews are good! Or so I'm told... though I woldn't really know, never having gotten one myself yet.


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